


Some Foolish Fresh Laid Plans

by slightlyjillian



Series: Without Denouement [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-24
Updated: 2010-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightlyjillian/pseuds/slightlyjillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>They weren't always convenient, but they made their own sort of sense. </i> Sequel to <i>Without Denouement</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Foolish Fresh Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> This odd pairing gets stuck in my head some days and persists until I write it out.

Christmas happened the same time it did every year. The clock by the bed was set to Terra 2 time in large red numbers that matched the natural flow of daylight and seasons. The device also had a smaller set of digits indicating the local time on the colony where most of the Winner Foundation projects originated. A third flipped from 11:59 to midnight. That was Earth, where neither of them were from so they had settled on Trowa's time zone in Italy to landmark the difference. Quatre might imagine Earth as a place where a good friend, an important person, lived.

***

"So when you stayed with Trowa," Quatre asked, drawing out his words to pick each one with uncertain deliberation. "Did the two of you, you know..." He cut the carrots with more decisiveness. The metal hitting the wooden board with staccato measure.

"No."

The sound slowed. "Interesting. I would understand if you did. I mean, I would have."

"After all these years?" Nichol commented, as if that made a difference. Quatre knew Nichol was talking about his own relationship with Trowa. One night before he'd met Quatre and hardly anything to get upset over. But Quatre wasn't thinking about what happened as much as what he never had.

"If you'd done the same to me, what I did to you, I'd have been furious. I'd have _moved on_." Quatre dumped the broken vegetable into a bowl. "Don't ever leave me."

Nichol moved to lean against the counter. He bumped Quatre's shoulder. "Quat, do you think that's likely?"

"No."

Then with dry humor, the older man continued, "Besides, Trowa's not the sort to go for an angry fuck."

Quatre raised an eyebrow.

Nichol puffed air between tight lips. "I am not telling you any more."

Pinching his chin, Quatre said thoughtfully, "I seem to only know what you tell me. I really had no idea he was gay."

"Bi..."

Quatre's fingers had untucked Nichol's shirt. "Let's stop talking about _him_."

Nichol chuckled, "So we're not finishing the soup?"

***

"Heero hasn't signed the birth certificate for Junior yet," Quatre spoke into the quiet of their room. They still shared a cabin with Sylvia Noventa, the mother of Heero's child who had been born on Terra 2 to everyone's surprise. After a bout of gentlemanly behavior, Quatre had surrendered the larger room with the larger bed to the petite blonde woman. Which meant that he and Nichol shared a much smaller accommodation (on the blue-print as 'storage space') and a bed that barely qualified as larger than _twin_. When she fretted,Quatre joked that it helped with intimacy, although most nights he felt overcooked in proximity to Nichol's internal heater.

Nichol didn't move and break their fragile balance. "Heero's a long way away. What brought this up? Something bothering you?"

"Just thinking about why important things have to be on paper. Notarized. Licensed."

"Less thinking. More sleeping," Nichol mumbled, but he found Quatre's fingers and bent his elbow until he found a comfortable angle for both of them.

"Sorry, just my thoughts caught in loop over all the Terra 2 paperwork, in triplicate. Which makes no sense when we're the ones making real time decisions. This is now. This is real," He paused. "We're real and we don't have papers."

"I'd sign a paper for you," Nichol retorted in a playful tone.

Quatre rolled over to speak into Nichol's ear, "I have no mother."

"Oh, how's that?"

"My father wanted a son, but he... didn't want a wife. He successfully created over two dozen girls--born from artificial bellies, these rather amazing devices that simulate the womb. He did most of the design work, but in the end they were mostly experiments to make sure the process was safe. For me. His son."

Nichol made a low sound in his chest. Quatre could feel it through the touch of their skin. "So what happened to all those sisters?"

"They were put with various families. Sometimes adopted by their own biological mothers, but Dad made sure they were all Winners. Probably thought he was atoning by leaving the connection open."

"And you?"

"Oh, he kept me." Quatre pulled his lip between his teeth until it was wet. "No woman to sign the birth certificate."

Nichol let his fingers reach up to thread through Quatre's smooth hair, tucking the long bits behind his ear. Nichol meant to say _I love you_, but love, as Quatre understood it, could get easily confused.

***

"Clock says it's Christmas," Quatre said having found Nichol sitting in the living room. He leaned over the back so he could wrap his lips around Nichol's ear.

Nichol learned that Quatre picked his moments to show affection. They weren't always convenient, but they made their own sort of sense.

***

A star when placed close enough to a planet, but not too close, illuminated the water with shimmering lights. Nichol held Junior around the waist as the naked child mimicked the movements of swimming. Arms went steadily then stilled when legs took their turn.Junior's uncanny blue eyes were fused shut in a brilliant smile.

"Let's not drink the lake now," Nichol chuckled, releasing Junior back onto the shore and watched the child run on surprisingly sure footing to his mother. "He might not be a fish, but you've got a sprinter there."

"Explains the fights into the bath," Sylvia chuckled, toweling off the boy. "He's so much like his father. He does things that remind me of Heero, except I know he's come by them naturally... I'm worried that without Heero here I can't encourage those parts to continue."

Quatre dropped the book he had been reading and excused himself to walk down the beach.

"Did I say something?" Sylvia shielded her eyes against the sun.

Nichol watched Quatre pause to touch a tree trunk, then continue steadily away.

"Go, follow him."

"That's what I do best..."

Quatre noticed when Nichol caught up, but continued to meander with a preoccupation of looking at his own feet, untied sneakers and no socks. "Heero would love that boy. It isn't right..."

"Heero will get here. We've done what we can to make sure that happens."

Quatre squinted against the sun to meet Nichol's watchful look. "I'm afraid I'm going to mess him up."

"What?" Nichol scoffed. "God, Quat. No one thinks or expects you to be a surrogate father for Junior." He noticed Quatre wince at the name.

"That _name_..."

"My name."

Quatre's long laugh turned slightly hysterical. "What was I thinking?"

"You missed me."

"You wish."

"I'm right."

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm more like my father than I thought," Quatre reasoned. "I can't have kids. There's no way I'd do what he did."

Nichol nodded and murmured with faux enlightenment, "That explains a lot. All this _activity_. You've been trying to get me pregnant."

Quatre's jaw dropped for several heartbeats. Then he laughed, "Who knows?" They walked in silence to the far side of the lake. "Did you know you were signing on for someone so crazy?"

"I might have had an inkling."

***

"Maybe we can convince Trowa to give us one or two of his illegitimate spawn," Quatre suggested.

"No."

***

Quatre had spent most of the afternoon at the newest construction site watching over the new design and making suggestions to the electrical outline. The team did well on the first project, but the new one was taxing their teamwork due to some unforeseen complications.

He thanked Nichol for the lunch he had waiting at a picnic table on the edge of the property. Chewing, he said, "You'd do a woman. Maybe if we found someone interested in carrying..."

Nichol didn't react, merely observed, "This is your natural solution? Well maybe I could see... no. No, no."

Slyly, Quatre watched for a reaction, "Not even Dorothy?"

"Damn it, Quat. You know about that?" Nichol's ears did turn red and the fisted napkin landed onto his sandwich. Nichol crossed his arms.

Shrugging, Quatre consoled, "I knew you had needs, so I sort of..."

Nichol interrupted, "Idiot. You were all I wanted, even then. God, you knew!" Fingers dug into his eyebrows caging away his face.

"It would have to be you. She's not my type," Quatre paused on a revelation. "She's blonde. So _you_ have a type..."

"Don't analyze me."

***

"I don't want to adopt. It's too much like..." Quatre didn't go on.

"It's okay."

***

For Christmas, Nichol gave Quatre the initial sketches of a robotic alteration that could improve the building equipment.

"You don't have to work while you're here," Quatre reminded, but didn't protest Nichol's continuing dialogue about how the machine could be constructed in five days. Three if he had an extra set of hands.

"So about the other thing. My conversations aren't irritating you, are they?" Quatre watched as Nichol tested the homemade mittens that Quatre had made on the sly with Sylvia's supervision.

"What?" Nichol glanced up. "No. Not as long as you consider me family."

A weight Quatre hadn't realized before seemed to fall from his shoulders. He smiled.

"In that case, then, what do you think about a pet?"


End file.
